Sunday, January 30, 2011

It has finally happened! Earlier this morning, at around 10am EST, I retrieved the last copper that pushed me past the old gold cap of 214,748 gold, 36 silver, and 48 copper.

So what to do next? Reach the current gold cap, of course! Short term, however, I'll probably sink more gold into the current speculation that Volatile Life will boom in price (bought 3 stacks of 200 Friday night at around 6g a piece). My personal speculation is that I can leech gold off of the next DMF by getting cheap Blackfallow Ink and trading it forInferno Ink. I'm still trying to get more and more Shadowspirit Diamonds (three stacks is not nearly enough!), and I might buy a few more DMC to flip (got a Hurricane Deck for 12k, hopefully can get a couple more around that price). Vanity items wise, I'm finally getting 310% flying! I feel like such a scrub on my Sandstone Drake, still going at 280%, but seeing how little I fly around, I just couldn't justify the 4k or whatever for ~30% extra speed. But now I really have no excuse. I might pick up one or both of the Hodirmammoths, as I've always liked them and I get bored of the ground mounts I do have (still noRaven Lord). I'm also eyeing a few more BoE epics, even though I keep telling myself not to buy more (I've easily spent close to 200k on BoE epics for my main and offspec). I don't get to raid much (or ever), so on one hand, getting that geared it pointless if I can't do anything with it, but on the other, this ensures I'll be capable when I can raid, and ready for the next major patch when it hits. Plus, purples are awesome.

And that's pretty much it for now! I'll leave everyone with a screenshot of My Sales from the past 2 or 3 weeks (not sure when I installed it, and I can't seem to do the cool "weekly" or "daily" sales things). I'm sure that most of you have somewhat similar sales, but if anything catches your eye and you'd like me to elaborate, please let me know!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

So if you haven't seen it already, head over to Trading With Zoxy, where I have a guest video post giving a rundown of how I use Trade Skill Master to create and sell Gylphs! Zoxy has been doing a fantastic job spreading the news about TSM and how it works, so I'm quite thankful I was able to contribute. Keep checking his blog for further guides, as I believe he will be going through most every profession and how to use TSM for it.

On a related note, in the comments of the post Kammler raised some very good questions regarding my video. I would like to take this opportunity to address them, because I believe they are questions a few of you will probably have.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A few weeks ago, I was under the impression that 4.0.6 was to be released on a day that I would be indisposed for most of the evening. Not wanting to miss out on Metamas, I bought the Remote AH service in a bit of a panic. My fears were for naught, as 4.0.6 still has not been released, but I'm going to hang on to the service until it does. So in the meantime, I've been trying to find the best use for it that I can.

With TUJ out of commission, the old "set a TUJ snatch list, receive email, buy out with RAH" trick is no longer viable. So I just amused myself with checking on ore prices between classes, occasionally reposting auctions that had expired, or restocking my gem auctions during the daily. Nice, but nothing really revolutionary, and certainly not worth the extra $3 a month.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

I apologize for the lack of recent updates. But I do have a quick tip to share with you all!

I recently started leveling my rogue again, partially for fun and partially because I want to expand into the leatherworking market. So while dusting her off and cleaning out the bags and banks, I found a couple of Mammoth Mining Bags that I had tried to sell at the beginning of Cata without much luck. So I tossed them in the AH, undercutting some guy who was posting at about 300g. And they sold. So I made a couple more and put them up. Those sold too. I started back on my rogue a little less than a week ago, and so far I have sold a total of 12 bags for an average of ~320g each, and they cost me probably less than 80g to make!

So how do you start making your own? Well, if you don't have the pattern already, you'll need to be honored with the Son's of Hodir first. Fair warning, the initial quest chain is a bit long, but you should be honored fairly quickly after the initial stages. The bags cost eight Heavy Borean Leather, which you can make with 48 Borean Leather or just buy off the AH. And that's all there is to it!

Monday, January 17, 2011

I was perusing the AH the other night, as I do when I'm bored, and while going through my regular checks of uncommon gems, I saw that someone had posted ten stacks of Alicite for 180g each. Since that's 9g per gem (the vendor price if I cut them), I figured this would be the perfect time to try to get some statistics as it's quite unlikely that I'll be able to get that many for that cheap. So I cleared out my bags and created 100 Alicite Pendants. And here are the results!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

If your server is anything like mine (and from what I've been hearing, it probably is), rare gems are going for next to nothing, as are the rare gem cuts. While some still hold decent value (Delicate Inferno Ruby), others (Solid Ocean Sapphire) are selling for laughably small amounts. Thankfully, profit can be made because plenty of the cuts still sell for more than the raw mats, but profit margins can be quite slim at times, even to the point where it really doesn't seem worth it.

So what's going on? Given that the stats on these are significantly better than even epic LK gems, one would expect them to sell for a lot more too. But that doesn't seem to be the case, as prices just keep dropping and dropping. The funny thing is, I don't think the prices have anything to do with what players are willing to pay for the gems. My guess is that a combination of over-prospecting and the "I farmed it, so it's free" mentality are causing sellers to severely undervalue what these gems are worth.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

WoWPopular.com is an absolutely fantastic resource for us goblins, especially now that The Undermine Journal has gone under (may it rest in peace). Though not intended as a gold-making resource, it can easily be adapted to the needs of enchanters and jewelcrafters in particular.

For those of you who have never heard of the site, it displays the most popular gear, gems, enchants, talents, glyphs, and now reforges, sortable by class and spec. It is designed to help players pick their talents, gear, chants, etc. by showing them what is popular for their class. However, us goblins can use it to help us figure out what's most profitable!

Monday, January 10, 2011

So with classes starting back up for me on Wednesday, I'm going to have to drastically cut down on the amount of time I spend on WoW. And with that, I'll also be posting less frequently. I've had a few different ideas for posts floating around in my head the past few days, and I wanted to get one done tonight, but unfortunately, I just found out about close to 100 pages of reading I have to do for Wednesday. And I'll be spending most of my time tomorrow in interviewing and networking workshops. The life of a 1L is quite fun.

But I won't be abandoning WoW and blogging altogether, as I'll definitely need a bit of escapism here and there. Hopefully I can stick to a weekly or bi-weekly posting schedule. I've got some good ideas brewing, I just need to find the time to form them into a coherent post.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

So this weekend was not the cash cow I had been expecting. As I mentioned a few days ago, and as Kreaton of Not So Secret Society discussed today, this weekend was when guilds who had been diligently capping their exp would reach level ten. With level ten comes BoA cloaks, provided you're honored with the guild. And with BoAs comes enchants! At least, that's what I thought.

The current best enchant for the BoAs is Enchant Cloak - Stealth, which was changed to give +8 agi and +8 dodge. Though obviously amazing for agi dps classes, even casters should find this appealing for the added survivability.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Meta gems with the Chaotic and Relentless prefixes now have a requirement of 3 red gems.

New meta gems have been added: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.

These are the upcoming changes to Jewelcrafting, and any JC should definitely take note, because there is plenty of profit to be had.

Most obviously, the changes to Chaotic ought to make this gem much more popular, so expect to move a bunch of these when the patch goes live. If you don't already have the cut, or even if you're not a JC, you should consider stocking up on a few of these from off the AH.

The prices of red gems should also see a huge increase, as people re-gem their gear to replace the sub-optimal green/yellow/blue gems they had. So be sure to stock up on Inferno Ruby before hand, or even grab the cut gems off the AH. You can even try cutting Carnelian, or getting cut Carnelian gems. If the price of red gems goes up as much as I think it will, there will be plenty of people unwilling to pay those prices, so sell them cut Carnelians instead.

And lastly, there are the new metas. I have no idea if you can buy the cut from the JC vendor, or if they are exclusively BoE recipes. In case you can trade tokens for them, start saving now. Though it's not guaranteed that the patch will hit this Tuesday, if it does there's still time to save up four tokens (Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue). If they are exclusively drops, hop on your skinner and farm up some leather while you grind for these. If you don't have a skinner, I'm sure it won't take long for someone to find a good place to farm these. A dungeon, perhaps. I'll personally be hitting up the leather farming spot I discussed in my previous post. These metas will likely be BiS for most classes, so do what you can to get them early and make a fortune!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of farming. It certainly has it's uses and it's advantages, but I generally find it repetitive and tedious, and just not for me. But there is one type of farming I tend to enjoy, and that's leather farming. Why? Because you get to kill stuff. Who doesn't enjoy slaughtering hundreds of helpless little creatures and then adding insult to injury by tearing the skin off their backs? (Ok, that got a bit sadistic, I apologize.) Back when I started playing WoW, my main was a rogue with Leatherworking and Skinning, and I made most of my money through skinning. Before I leveled my shaman and learned the joys of Jewelcrafting, I made a modest amount of money farming the Shoveltusks outside of New Agamand in Howling Fjord. Except for the occasional bull, they were all passive and traveled in groups of 4-5, so I would stealth into a pack, and AoE them down with Fan of Knives. Although they mostly dropped scraps, I found farming there to be preferable to places like Stormpeaks for a few reasons. One, like I mentioned, was that they and the majority of the mobs in the area were passive, so I didn't have to worry about drawing unwanted aggro. Two, they had low health and traveled in packs, so it was very easy for me to AoE a bunch of them at a time. And three, they dropped good vendor trash, the occasional green, and Rhino Meat and Chilled Meat which I could sell on the AH, or cook and sell. Like I said before, I usually don't farm anymore, but Cold's blog is wonderful and I wanted to contribute to the carnival. So I decided to bite the bullet and give farming another shot, and hopefully find a place with qualities similat to my LK farming spots.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

This is an issue that troubled me quite a bit when I first started getting into serious jewel crafting for profit toward the end of LK. Since I was buying the uncut gems and not prospecting for them (I'm not sure it was profitable to prospect Titanium Ore for epics) I often ran into problems when the cut gem was selling for maybe 10-15g more than the uncut. I would usually just ignore that gem completely and focus on the ones that sold for a wider profit margin. However, it would sometimes be the case where none, or very few, of my cuts had good margins. So the conundrum was, do I buy and cut these, knowing I won't be making a whole lot from them, or just not bother with it and hope the market bounces back up soon?

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Opportunity cost is a subject that has fascinated me for quite some time. Basil over at Gold Capped perked my ears to the concept in his Time is Money post, and my Torts professor helped me really grasp the concept. Simply put, opportunity cost is the money you're not making by doing something else. The best, and for me the most relevant, illustration is the opportunity cost of going to a graduate school like law school. I graduated from college and instead of getting a job and making money, I am now going to spend three more years shelling out obscene amounts of cash to another institution. The opportunity cost of going to law school is the money I could have made during these three years if I had got a job instead.

In WoW, opportunity cost comes up most frequently in the context of farmed materials. As Basil pointed out, farming isn't free. Farming in particular has two opportunity costs to watch out for. First, there is what you can earn from the different uses of those gathered mats. Second, there's the opportunity cost of farming itself.

Monday, January 3, 2011

The Gnomish Coin did a post on this enchant about a month ago, and seeing how guilds will soon be able to get heirloom cloaks I thought I'd revisit the topic.

Enchant Cloak - Stealth was changed not too long ago to now give +8 Agi and +8 Dodge, making it the best enchant for the new heirloom cloaks. Unfortunately, when this change occurred the cloaks were not even close to being released so they did not sell well, if at all, for me. However, now that guilds who have been capping their exp every day are five days away from reaching level ten and unlocking the heirloom cloaks, I expect this enchant to become very popular very soon.